From
the Editor: This month’s Spotlight focuses on strengthening local chapters.
Following John Bailey’s article is an excerpt from the TOPS Handbook.

How to Build and Strengthen Chapters
by John Bailey

From
the Editor: John Bailey is president of the Fairfax County Chapter of the National
Federation of the Blind of Virginia, a responsibility that has allowed him to
develop and practice the strategies and programs he describes in the following
article. This is what he says:

Introduction

The old saying that “If you are not moving forward, you are moving backward”
is as true in local chapters as it is in industry. A never-ending effort for
chapter officers and members alike is seeking out new members to replace those
who move or just stop coming. We spend many hours at quarterly chapter board
meetings discussing how to juggle the ongoing need to build membership and the
chapter’s limited resources.

Lots of information
about building chapters is around. Below are some of those ideas applied in
ways that fit the circumstances of my chapter in Northern Virginia. The effectiveness
of these ideas for your chapter is limited only by your imagination and the
constraints of your chapter’s situation.

People are
busy. They have more than enough responsibilities and activities to fill their
schedules. So why do people decide to take time out of their already overbooked
schedules to attend meetings of the National Federation of the Blind? The answer
is simple: the NFB satisfies a need that cannot be filled by any other organization.
These needs are as varied as the people who attend our meetings. Parents of
blind children attend because they want to know more about the options available
in assessing their child’s educational options. Newly blind members need to
meet others like themselves to exchange information, receive inspiration, and
enjoy fellowship. Even though members’ needs are diverse, meetings of the NFB
can go a long way towards assisting your entire membership to find the answers
to their questions.

Look at a
strong chapter, and you will discover that the membership believes that the
monthly meetings are valuable to them. When this happens, members are more likely
to participate in chapter activities, take on leadership roles, and (best of
all) bring in new members, which helps the chapter grow.

Making a chapter
pertinent to its membership takes effort. You must make it attractive to others
while ensuring that current members stay involved. This article covers a few
well-known methods that have helped many chapters meet their goals for membership
growth.

Suppose you
threw a party and nobody came. This can easily happen with chapter meetings
if the word about your activities does not get out. No matter how good the program,
refreshments, or door prizes are, if people don’t know about the meeting, the
evening will be long and lonely for those who planned it.

The goal of
any advertising effort is to deliver your message to the people you want to
attract. One great resource for finding blind people in the area is your local
access service or Talking Book library. The library has a database full of names
of people in your area who are perfect for joining your chapter. Because such
organizations must protect their patrons’ contact information, they will not
just hand over a set of labels or an address list. But there are ways of getting
access without violating patron privacy.

Several times
we have used the following process to mail notices for NFB-sponsored projects
to the library’s list of blind patrons. First we got the count of blind people
in our zip codes on the library’s list. Then we printed that number of announcements
and delivered them to the library. Finally the library staff labeled our flyers
and mailed it for us using the Free-Matter privilege. If the library is short-handed,
you may be able to provide volunteers to slap on the labels at the library.

We have used
this technique for establishing new chapters, increasing NFB-NEWSLINE® subscribers,
and announcing parents of blind children seminars, adaptive technology fairs,
etc. If the event you want to advertise is important to the blind community,
there is a good chance that your local Talking Book library can help you get
the message out to the right people.

Many chapters
have a group that goes by several names. They may be called the membership committee
or the hospitality committee. Their job is to help introduce the chapter to
potential new members. They do a very necessary job. However, the responsibility
for bringing in new members does not fall on their shoulders alone. It is everyone’s
job.

I heard about
a church in which each member of the congregation is expected to talk about
the church to others and to bring in new members. The program was called “Each
One Reach One.” It is understood that no one is just a member of the church;
everyone is an ambassador. There are many benefits to having members bring in
new blood. One of the most important is the bond between the old member and
the new. Each existing member takes special responsibility for everyone he or
she brings in. This one-on-one attention makes it more likely that someone who
attends a first meeting will return.

Each chapter
program is an important part of developing a vital organization. As president
of my local chapter, I plan most meeting programs. Making each meeting interesting
and educational is a challenge. One aspect of the chapter program that we try
never to forget is the inclusion of some aspect of Federation philosophy.

If you ask
most members of our organization to name the most valuable thing they have learned
by attending chapter meetings, they would say it is the notion that we are normal
people who happen to be blind. Learning adaptive blindness techniques enables
us to be participants in the community, not just recipients of social services.
Introducing philosophical discussions into chapter meetings is easy. It can
be done by simply setting aside a few minutes each meeting for a discussion
of some Kernel Book story or a recent newspaper article about a blind person.
We have had many lively discussions describing personal experiences.

Two types
of programs (adaptive technology fairs and transportation seminars) have been
very successful in attracting new members to our meetings. Few topics have greater
appeal to blind people. Adaptive technology fairs are easy to organize. We have
had one or two vendors come to a meeting to tell us about their products and
let us have hands-on experience with it. We have also filled a high school cafeteria
with a dozen or so vendors. Dozens of members and new people went from table
to table asking questions and getting literature. We made sure to get everyone’s
contact information by having them register for door prizes donated by the vendors.

Transportation
seminars are more complex to arrange. However, they have many PR benefits that
are not available in other events. For example, my chapter hosted a transportation
seminar to which we invited several public transportation providers to meet
with their blind customers, to tell us what their goals are, and to let us give
them feedback about what was working and what was not. This event was very well
attended. In fact, we got a story about it in the local paper.

We did not
attract as many new members as we had hoped--we never do. However, we established
ourselves as an organization of action and advocacy. We have had several requests
in recent months from the transportation agencies and their clients to host
similar programs in the future. This is a win/win event for both groups, and
it is a great way to raise chapter visibility in the community.

Just having
fun at chapter programs is also a good idea. Here are some examples of things
we have done and ideas we are currently working on. We invited an image consultant
to come to our meeting and answer our questions about how best to present ourselves
in social and professional situations. We covered giving a firm handshake, employing
business card etiquette, introducing yourself, and (my favorite) dressing for
success. We are hooking up with members of a local Harley-Davidson motorcycle
club for a joint tandem ride around the city in the spring. We want to make
this an event that will attract younger people to our meetings. It will also
be a good media event because it lends itself to photos and television coverage.

One day a
chapter member mentioned that she wanted to drive a car so that she would know
how it feels to drive. We have made arrangements with a local driving school
instructor to use his two-steering-wheeled cars for a program in which we can
all have the experience of driving.

Summary

Chapters exist because members attend. If members don’t believe that they are
getting something out of meetings and events, they will stop coming. Conversely,
the more relevant chapter activities are, the more members will become active
and the more new members will be attracted.

Two ways of
finding potential members are sending notices of chapter events through your
Talking Book library and persuading current chapter members to recruit the blind
people they encounter every day. Chapter programs that entertain while they
educate attendees about NFB philosophy are always popular and are an excellent
way to introduce others to your chapter.

A strong,
vibrant chapter does not happen by accident. The members must believe that their
chapter plays an important part in their lives and that it is their responsibility
to reach out to the community to bring in new members. In this way the chapter
will grow and become more important to its members and to its community.

Strengthening Local Chapters

We hope that the following suggestions will help you to make the work you do
on the local level as meaningful and productive as possible.

Strengthening
Philosophy:

Read a
Kernel Book story each month and discuss key themes.

Incorporate
a how-do-I? segment into the agenda so that members can share tips for getting
things done.

Have regular
times for sharing why-I-am-a-Federationist stories.

Host employment
panels in which chapter members share strategies for preparing for successful
careers, getting hired, and becoming indispensable employees.

Bring
in speakers on topics that affect blind people.

Organize
an NFB book club.

Host roundtable
discussions on thought-provoking topics similar to those used in training
center seminars.

Have teach-a-technique
segments to work on skills. For example, during the holiday season you could
practice wrapping gifts.

Building
Community:

Organize
picnics, game nights, and other social events.

Hold dinners
at different members' houses to welcome new people.

Organize
community-service activities, such as collecting cans for food shelves and
gifts for Toys for Tots.

Attend
community events together, such as concerts and ball games.

Have those
attending the meeting give their names and a different fact about themselves
each month.

Keep a
record of chapter accomplishments and celebrate them.

Hold a
chapter birthday party on the anniversary of your chapter's founding.

Host a
descriptive video night.

Keep a
chapter email/phone list, including contact information for first-time attendees,
and be sure to follow up with people.

Assign
a mentor to every new person.

Celebrate
the good news of individual members with baby showers, wedding showers, etc.

Educating
the Public:

Set up
a speaker's bureau to organize public education engagements.

Advertise
events on community calendars.

Staff
booths at local fairs and festivals.

Convince
local public radio stations to donate airtime to your chapter to use as an
avenue for educating the public.

Reach
out to community organizations such as Lions clubs to help them become allies
in our cause.

Try to
have a newspaper article written about your chapter.

Submit
public service announcements about the NFB to local television and radio stations.